Richard Wong (SVP of Engineering @ Coursera) shares how the dilemma of speed & quality evolves as a company scales. We cover how to balance building new features & fixing quality issues, internal & external signals to help you determine your priorities, & how to gain alignment. Plus how to avoid over-engineering!

ABOUT RICHARD WONG
Richard oversees Coursera's infrastructure and product development. Prior to joining Coursera, Richard held various engineering leadership roles at the early days of LinkedIn, with a key focus on scaling the Jobs marketplace and Talent Solutions to become its first billion-dollar product.

Richard also oversaw the product development for Linkedin international expansions. Prior to LinkedIn, Richard spent over a decade at Microsoft leading various product development teams including MSN Hotmail, Active Directory, Windows Server, and System Center. Richard received his Master’s degree from Stanford University.

SHOW NOTES

The dilemma of speed v. quality (1:49)
Richard’s personal example of speed v. quality dilemma (5:58)
How Coursera improved product quality (7:47)
Tactical steps to improve product quality (10:34)
How to avoid over-engineering & leverage customer complaints to improve product quality (16:37)
How to balance speed & quality as an engineering leader (20:06)
How to get alignment on quality issues with executive & cross-functional teams (25:25)
How to prevent spending too much time on quality-focused engineering work (29:46)
What are the signals for when you need to shift between speed v. quality? (33:22)
How the dilemma of speed v. quality change as you scale (38:52)
How Richard allocates resources to focus on new features or quality (42:02)
Rapid Fire Questions (48:28)
Takeaways (54:17)

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